


Spectrum

by viinas



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: F/M, Ishbal | Ishval, Past and Present
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 15:49:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,984
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20312047
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/viinas/pseuds/viinas
Summary: The heat warms Riza Hawkeye’s skin with the discomfort of old enemies forced to reconcile. Her boots are scuffed and faded beyond recognition, but her eyes and the terrain are all too familiar with one another. No amount of kindness will weather the rough killer that is ever-present in her gaze. The healed white sand will forever be stained with invisible blood.Ishval during the war and restoration.





	Spectrum

It started out white.

An assault of heat met them on the battlefield; it was as if the sun itself were saying _you’re not welcome here_. Gleaming black boots disturbed the pale sand as they trekked onward.

White heat.

White sand.

Purgatorial white noise between every gunshot, every death. Battlefields were the past, present, and future images of a graveyard—ostensibly lifeless yet too agonizingly full of life. There was no humanity nor heart in the pulling of a trigger. What lived inside of a soldier was discarded in exchange for endless white horizons, while the life inside of a victim was as ephemeral as the color of the untainted sand beneath their feet.

Soon it would become red.

Red as the blood blossoming from a wound carved into a now-still heart.

—as the Ishvalan eyes staring glassily into the white hot sun.

—as the ink branded to the killer’s back, staining white skin with the crimson ammunition the only person she has ever trusted would use to burn the world down.

Ink that would one day dye the sand beneath corpses her bullets weren’t able to find.

~*~

The heat warms Riza Hawkeye’s skin with the discomfort of old enemies forced to reconcile. Her boots are scuffed and faded beyond recognition, but her eyes and the terrain are all too familiar with one another. No amount of kindness will weather the rough killer that is ever-present in her gaze. The healed white sand will forever be stained with invisible blood.

Forever red.

They are two of a kind.

A hand rests on her back. She looks up to see the wielder of her ink weapons. His lips twitch into somewhat of a sad smile, like he understands—of course he does. Beyond this battlefield, the two of them share more than burdens, sins, and ink stains from her back to his hands. Each has mastered the other’s nuances with fluency. Their first language has become each other.

His hand on her back is flesh-warm, white and red gloves no longer needed. He returns to Ishval with new purpose, unrecognizably bare hands, and honest desire. The sun doesn’t intimidate him anymore. These days, he commandeers heat like it’s an art form. He promised her that his flames are no longer weapons and she believes him.

Restoration, they call this mission. Lives cannot be returned, but perhaps they can spin their red legacy into their condemnation and this country’s salvation.

~*~

Night arrived like a plague. Black skies swallowed the corpses and cast shadows over all the blood, cloaking everything they’d done. Shadows traveled all across the desert, leaving no crime unprotected, no devastation uncovered, no stolen soul a path to freedom. Clouds had drawn in, shielding them from the silver of moon and starlight.

Three killers sat by a fire.

Soft oranges shifted across their weary faces and sooty uniforms. Mugs made from chipped, rusted metal sat in their dirt-caked hands. The coffee was lukewarm and bitter, but they downed it anyway. No one spoke.

They’d turned this country red.

Time made it black.

Tomorrow it would be white once more and the cycle would repeat.

Her hands shook around the mug. As a sharpshooter, she was always steady; but after the last bullet was fired, her bones felt heavy and her veins ran cold. It was like waking up from a nightmare.

She would soon come to find that the nightmares of what she’d done would follow her with painstaking, unmitigated loyalty.

Major Mustang stared into the fire. Embers popped in the reflection of his dark eyes. Black like the night. Guarded as the shadows.

She wondered if he had any regrets with how he chose to use her alchemy.

She wondered if fear, grief, and ambition left any room for regrets.

There was so much about being a soldier she still didn’t understand.

~*~

Their first night back after the Promised Day is quieter than expected; it’s still and eerie in a way they’ve come to expect from nights in Ishval. An undercurrent of disquiet lives beneath the sand. It feels like only moments separate them from being swallowed by unrest.

Riza gazes up at the silver-speckled sky. Plumes of smoke no longer hold the light captive. Though it’s far from comfortable, there is peace in the air. The Ishvalan people accepted them with gentleness that Riza will not mistake for forgiveness, but it was kind nevertheless.

These are the people they killed.

This unconditional altruism is what they’d fought against.

If she were still the eighteen-year-old kid fresh out of the Academy, maybe the hypocrisy would have made her sick. But she’d traded that luxury for bloodstained bullets and final judgments she’d never had any right to pass.

She’s joined by General Mustang before she can see him. Her shoulders tense like a reflex when she feels a shift in the dry air; but when he speaks, the frigidity melts.

“Strange, right?” he says. He sits beside her on the steps leading to their lodging place.

She sighs, bringing her forehead to rest on her joined fingertips. They are bathed in silver for the very first time in this desert. She doesn’t think they will ever earn that.

“Yes,” she says. His proximity is like a blanket on a cold night. Beside him, she doesn’t feel as exposed nor disoriented.

“I’m so sorry,” he says after a stretch of silence. His voice is uncharacteristically small—a tone reserved only for her.

She doesn’t need to ask what for. The atmosphere is dredging up memories for him as well. When she looks at the sand, she hears gunshots—rhythmic and insistent. For him, it’s a blast of fire—alchemic secrets entrusted to him.

“We survived for a reason.” She turns to him, taken by the pale silver light touching his hair, his eyelashes, the tip of his nose. But he’s staring down at his open hands; they’re drenched in shadow.

Tentatively, she takes one, holding it up to the light. He slips his fingers into the spaces between hers and warmth pools in the center of her chest.

“There’s still so much to do,” he agrees, keeping his eyes fixed on their joined hands, as if that alone is keeping him centered. “If anyone insists on calling me a hero, I’ll make damn sure it’s for a good reason.”

Heroes. Killers. The gray sea in between. They’ve touched every facet and still don’t know what defines them.

Even though he knows it, she says, “And I’m with you.”

~*~

Her salvation was a spiral of white, red, and gold. She felt it crawling over her back, clawing deep beneath her skin as if trying to wrench her open and devour everything inside. It hurt enough to make her vision go black for a few merciful seconds before tendrils of fire yanked her back into consciousness.

She bit down on an old belt, the bitter taste of leather like sugar in contrast to the smell of burning flesh. White heat. Red pain. Gold freedom.

_Just a little longer_.

The scream didn’t so much escape her as it tore through the resilience she’d failed to maintain. It _hurt_ and no matter how vehemently she knew she’d forsaken her right to relief after everything she’d done, something in her still begged for it all to stop.

Tongues of gold fire rolled across the array. She couldn’t see past the pain of it, but the relentless way it continued on made one thing clear: the Major—Mr. Mustang—was keeping his promise.

Should she have thanked him for freeing her?

Should she have condemned him for weaponizing these secrets?

The scars that would form on her back forever tied his alchemy to her regrets; in the end, she was the only one to pull the trigger when it was asked of her.

She should have hated him, but when two killers fought with bloodied hands, it became impossible to discern where one ended and the other began.

They were allies in this war and would be allies in trying to rectify it all. That was the only way either one of them would be able to live with the atrocities they committed.

He held her when it was over, though it was very clinical. He touched her gingerly, dressing her wounds when she was too weak to make out details past the dull lamplight that had blurred into a golden haze.

“Not a trace?” she murmured, a current of drowsiness pulling her under. Her eyes fell shut. Shallow breaths filtered through her lungs.

“It’s unreadable,” he replied, his voice gravelly. That was when she realized his hands were trembling. She wondered if they’d been so unsteady while he was burning her.

_No_, she decided. _He has a soldier’s precision._

The aftershocks of what had just transpired seemed to be shaking him, from his hands to the rough weariness in his voice. But the job had been finished.

“I’m sorry,” he said, but the words were too heavy to be confined to this very moment. She had asked for this. He knew very well what it all meant to her. This ran deeper than her skin—it ran six feet underneath hot Ishvalan sand.

~*~

Rectification comes in a cloudless expanse of blue. The sunlight holds the desert in a warm embrace; but heat doesn’t feel so oppressive when it’s met halfway. Riza carries the burden of a thousand sins, each punctuated by a bullet. Nothing she does today will return everything she has taken from this land; however, for as long as there is hope, there is a future.

Yes, that is what they have come here to offer. Redemption is too kind, too naive, for monsters who cover their blood-red skin in clean, blue uniforms. Returning to this desert is more than something as immature as penance and with far less delusion than equivalent exchange.

Riza stands at the Colonel’s side, same as always.

She follows him, same as always.

They work until their muscles fatigue, their voices grow hoarse, they’ve torn themselves wide open and allow nothing to go unseen, ungiven, unapologetic. And the sky, an unobstructed and vibrant blue sea of solace, watches it all.

At the end of the day, they discard professionalism and fall into each other with ease. They allow themselves one selfish moment to be unforgivingly human. Cloudless cerulean eyes have closed for the night, leaving behind a night sky of silver-speckled indigo. They tell themselves it’s okay, for now, to fall apart.

They don’t drink in each other’s anguish. They’re loathe to lose themselves in each other’s skin behind the back of daylight. Instead, they collapse onto the floor, entangled in each other’s limbs, and inhale the intermingling smell of old fire, new sunshine, ever-present gunpowder, and white hot sand.

She doesn’t follow him because she loves him, but because they owed it to each other to end up right here, under the scrutiny of the desert once again.

His arms wind around her and her hair tickles his nose but they’re still not close enough, never close enough. There is no physical equivalent to what they are to each other or the understanding of how they fit into each other’s lives.

“Thank you,” he whispers and leaves a hard kiss on her crown. The only words either of them has left.

Thankfully, they’ve never needed words to communicate.

They both understand that tomorrow will be a new day where they must look into the Ishvalans’ kind red eyes while carrying the burden of everything they’ve stolen from them. But this was never about them—their own future was forsaken at the end of a bullet and the embers of a fire.

This country, these people, are comprised of stories and legacies in varying shades. One day, even if it kills them, they will ensure that it blooms in full color once more.


End file.
